


Nanuk

by krycekasks



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anti-Omnic Sentiment, F/F, Found Family, cabin in the woods, explicit for a wee bit of smut, implication of someone getting eaten by a wild animal, mention of blood and description of gunshot wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-16 02:13:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17540702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krycekasks/pseuds/krycekasks
Summary: Polar Bears need the solid ice under them to be able to hunt and feed themselves. Without it they must wander, looking for a new home.Zarya is hanging on to resentment against the omnics: the conflict gave her purpose, but the world is changing and she has no control over it. She is disturbed by her recent experiences and does not know it but is adrift. She needs to get the solid ice under her again, but the only way will be through acceptance, not trying to recreate the past that gave her purpose. When a mysterious signal prompts Winston to send her and a small team on a mission to the long defunct Ecopoint Arctic, without a clear picture of what they will encounter, the team could be there for weeks. Everyone comes with their own baggage, and that’s on top of the whisky the cowboy tried to sneak onboard. So when cracks start to form amongst the group she will have to keep them together.





	Nanuk

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks and hugs for the wonderful beta and cheerleader [Mari-Knickerbocker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_Knickerbocker/pseuds/Mari_Knickerbocker) <3
> 
> UPDATE: NOW WITH ART :D
> 
> Andii made a beautiful drawing for this story ([look here!!!](http://pennycatss.tumblr.com/post/182847892075/piece-for-nanuk-zaryamei-fic-by-krycek-for-the)) - THANK YOU
> 
> This one's for pipey <3
> 
> "Nanuk" is Inuktitut for "polar bear" and I used it as the title as a tribute to the region the story takes place in and respect for the creature in question - I feel I can and will do more about this.

 

**The Past Can Do No Wrong**

 

“Together we are stronger...but stronger still if they showed even a modicum of discipline.”

 

Zarya stands on the platform that juts out from storage towards the landing pad where her teammates are taking their time hauling their gear to the Orca. A hand larger than most lands on her shoulder and she braces herself for the impact, a widening of her stance that has now become habitual. Reinhardt’s booming guffaw blows the fringe over her eyes and Zarya is annoyed once again that she did not have time for a trim before the mission.

“Ha! The gunslinger does tend to move at his own pace, doesn’t he? When I was a young crusader I would stay up ‘til the early hours of the morning in celebration!” Zarya looks over at him, surprise evident on her face as she tries to reconcile the seasoned warrior with the picture he is painting. He nudges her arm with his elbow and gives her a wink before continuing, “There was more than one morning when my commander had to rouse me from my slumber to prepare for the next fight. I cleaned more than my fair share of latrines in punishment, I can tell you that.”

Zarya raises her chin and a single skeptical brow, “I do not believe it. You are the most disciplined warrior of us all. Your training regime alone is on par with my own, second to none.”

Reinhardt straightens his posture crossing his arms over his chest, no doubt to accentuate his biceps, obviously pleased with Zarya’s assessment, “Fine praise indeed, I will take it, ha! But it is true.” His voice takes on a decidedly more sober tone, “I learned the hard way to value honour over glory.” He gestures down towards the ship where McCree sets down a crate to chat with Tracer, removing his ever-present cowboy hat to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Looks like someone was up late, no doubt indulging in a pre-mission libation with the archer.”

As if summoned, Hanzo emerges from the shadows above a stack of storage containers above them, dropping silently to the ground. He straightens, adjusts Stormbow slung over his back and starts towards the ship. He gives them a tight nod in greeting which they return. Zarya crosses her arms over her chest, unconsciously mimicking the giant beside her, “Speak of Devil.” Despite his display of agility, Zarya notices a distinct drag in his step, a slight bowing of his head that has less to do with the early hour and everything to do with exhaustion borne from a sleepless night. She refrains from shaking her head in dismay, but only just.

Reinhardt’s laughter booms again, “Ha! Well, think of it this way Zarya. Not everyone was a born athlete like you, but you will have weeks if not months on this mission to whip them into shape.” 

The thought brings a smile to her face, “In Russia, we work first, work hard, before party.” She straightens her spine, rolling her right shoulder as if adjusting an invisible weight. “I will get them into shape.”

She almost misses Reinhardt’s laughing retort of “If anyone can do it you can, comrade.” At that moment a figure about the size of a mixing bowl comes zooming down the passage from the direction of the labs. Zarya automatically stiffens at the sight of the little omnic, the creation of the scientist, zooming unnaturally through the air towards the ship, her hand subconsciously reaching for the particle cannon that is packed away in its crate on-board the Orca.  Reinhardt’s booming voice shakes her from her stupor, “Ah, Snowball, our little friend! The doctor must be running late.”

Zarya cringes at the term  _ friend  _ applied to what essentially amounts to a domesticated form of the robotic intelligence that is once again threatening the world. 

A great lumbering noise comes from the direction of the labs and soon a large cart loaded precariously with tools and equipment comes laboriously up the path towards the ship, seemingly driven by a small bundle of fur.

“Dr. Zhou! Wait there and we will assist you!” Reinhardt’s voice startles the bundle of fur and a hood is pushed back revealing the beaming smile of Dr. Zhou. She lets out an embarrassed giggle, pushes her glasses up with the back of her hand, “I think I may have overdone it, but better safe than sorry!” She looks up at Zarya on the platform and her smile falters. She shrugs, “I hope I am not holding up our leave time.”

Zarya realizes that she is still frozen in place, reaching for a weapon that is not there. She immediately drops her arm and shakes her head as if to rouse herself. “No, doctor, you cannot be late.” Reinhardt is already at the cart so Zarya jumps down from the platform and goes to stand beside the scientist to add her weight towards pushing the cart. She looks down into soft brown eyes, “The mission starts with you.”

The scientist looks away but Zarya catches a glimpse of her smile returning. She starts pushing the cart again, “Please, Zarya, ‘doctor’ is Angela. I’m just Mei.”

Zarya resists the urge to show off her strength by taking the full weight of the cart and pushes just enough to take the strain off her partner. She rolls the name around her mind a few times, softening it from a curt bark to something that takes a little more time, a little more reverent, something more befitting of the woman beside her, “Mei.”

 

**

****

******

****

**

 

**The Ice**

 

“I can see from the look on your face that you dislike the snow as much as I.”

 

Zarya glances away from the loading bay window long enough to see Hanzo beside her, arms crossed and scowling down at the ice fields far below. She looks back and lets her gaze drift with the windswept terrain towards the icy peaks in the distance. “It is not the snow I dislike. No, snow reminds of home.” She imagines the side of the closest rock wall burst out with an explosion hard enough to scatter the ice with debris, a web of deep cracks shattering its surface. A hand emerges from the crack, unnaturally long fingers made of war-torn steel claw into the ice, unstoppable and uncompromising, pulling forth the promise of battle and death. One hand becomes hundreds, becomes thousands, tens of thousands. She looks grimly down at the vision laid out across the land under the Orca, altogether far away yet so close she can see where the scorch marks have eaten away at the serial numbers on the metallic bones coming out of the ice, the fingerprint of the Siberian Omnium. “It is the memories.”

 

“I think it is beautiful.”

 

Zarya looks down on her other side where something soft like a fox’s tail has rubbed up against her bicep. Mei leans forward to see what they are looking at, a box full of tools and spare parts in her hands, obviously on her way to the lounge table where she will no doubt set up a makeshift lab for the duration of the trip. Hanzo gives a disbelieving huff but Mei continues, “Did you know that the polar bears have returned? Decades ago when the ice was melting they had to wander far from home looking for food and shelter. They couldn’t hunt, you see, couldn’t build dens to have their young. They needed solid ice beneath them stretching out over the Arctic ocean.”

Hanzo outright scoffs, but his voice betrays his sense of wonder over disbelief, “It is hard to imagine anything living down there.”

Ever cheerful, Mei adds, “Oh not just anything, but anyone too! People have moved back into their ancestral homelands as well.”

Zarya has no idea what her face must look like but Mei looks up at her, gives a small smile that makes her heavy framed glasses slip down her nose. Then she  _ giggles _ before resuming her way to the table, that half-formed floating omnic trailing behind her.

A slap on her other arm has her whipping back around to find Hanzo still scowling down at the white covered land below, chin raised and eyes narrowed as though it has personally offended him. “Come. Our time would be better spent training.”

Zarya gives one last look out the window, the sweeping landscape pristine once again. “Da.”

 

**

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******

****

**

 

**The Ice Cracks**

 

“I can hear them arguing from here.”

 

Zarya sets down the large case she has carried inside and looks out the window above the sink in the kitchen. The cabin where they will be running their base of operations from is old and small yet completely protected by the icy hill that rises behind it and the dense stand of pine trees encircling the front. The walls are thick, massive logs fitted together to form an airtight seal. Despite the seemingly impenetrable wood, the deep reverberation of the cowboys’ voice makes its way inside, though she cannot make out the words. Outside Hanzo stands ramrod straight, arms crossed over his chest, the physical manifestation of the barrier he keeps up between himself and the rest of the world. McCree has dropped his bags to the ground and has his arms spread out, his face is contorted with obvious frustration as he dishes out whatever it is to the archer. The closer he leans into the archers space the more rigid the other man becomes. As McCree pauses to take a breath Zarya can feel the low rumble of Hanzo’s retort, short and biting to be sure. Whatever he says causes McCree to reel back as if slapped, a look of disbelief on his face. 

As the cowboy’s tirade starts back up, Zarya looks away, rolling her eyes. “It is no doubt the same argument they always have.”

Mei sounds cheerful despite the obvious discomfort in her stance as she quickly moves away from the door towards the long wooden table set on one side of the kitchen, “Surely they are not fighting over who drank the last of the whisky already.”  

“No, I think it is the one about Hanzo’s brother, the cyborg.”

Mei looks up at her disapprovingly, “You mean Genji.”

Zarya grunts and looks away, “That is what I said.” Despite having worked with Shimada Genji on several missions, the half-man’s existence was still deeply unsettling to her. Being put back together like so many puzzle pieces after being ripped apart by his dragon of a brother was a technical miracle, but Zarya cannot shake her distrust of artificial life so easily. She cannot help but feel that she would wish to be dead if the same fate had befallen her. She knows voicing these thoughts will lead nowhere but fresh arguments with her new teammates and now that they are isolated from the larger team effectively in the middle of nowhere for an indeterminate amount of time holding them together is a priority. 

She looks slyly over at Mei, “Besides, I may have offloaded the crate of whisky McCree tried to sneak on board before we took off.”

The smile that Mei gives her warms her from the inside out, “I think we may all regret that soon enough, we could have used that to warm ourselves!” The scientist looks around the cabin, eventually gesturing to the corner where a cast iron furnace sits, door hanging open revealing an empty dark cold as night. “Looks like that’s our only source of heat.” She looks back to Zarya, gaze hopeful, “I hope you know how to start a fire.”

Zarya looks at the small dusty pile of wood piled near the door and mentally adds wood chopping to their list of tasks. Warmth versus stealth. How low of a profile would they need to keep out here? She nods, something to discuss as a group. Later. “When I was little girl in Siberia, I used to go with my parents to my grandfather’s hunting lodge. It was summer but some nights were cold enough that we used the wood stove there. It has been many years, I do not think I can remember the steps to get the fire going and keep the house from filling with smoke and choking us out in our sleep.”

Mei gives a nervous giggle, “That would be a pretty bad start to the mission. I’m sure McCree must have some experience. He is always telling us stories of sleeping out under the stars during his outlaw years.” She carefully pulls out a tool box large enough to have snagged on the corners of her duffle bag and sets it on the table, “I do not think I have ever had to start my own fire before. At Ecopoint we always had the geothermal core to provide heat.” She rummages around the bag pulling out more tools and parts. Zarya wonders if she brought any actual clothes with her. “I don’t remember ever being cold before Antarctica.”

Zarya kneels down before the large case housing her particle cannon and snaps the latches, throwing back the lid, “I have been caught outside ‘sleeping under the stars’ on more than one occasion during the last uprising.” She runs a hand over the surface of the barrel. Nothing seems to have shifted out of place during transport. “There are few trees around the Siberian omnium.”

Mei has stopped arranging her tools on the table’s surface and straightens, looking to Zarya with curiosity, “What did you do for warmth?”

Zarya lifts the casing around the graviton mechanism and inspects it closely. The titanium ring must have been shaken loose from Tracer’s less than gentle landing. She purses her lips, suppressing her annoyance at the wild pilot’s antics. She reaches for the Allen key in the pouch tucked inside the case, “A downed mecha has a nuclear power cell. If the shielding was intact we would build a temporary shelter around that. If not, the blood of our enemies did more than suffice.” One of the screws around the ring was being particularly stubborn. The application of some brute force solves that and she snaps the lid closed. That’s when she realizes how quiet the room has become. 

She looks up to see Mei staring down at her in horror, the cables for her endothermic blaster all but forgotten in her hands. Her voice is almost a whisper but Zarya does not mistake the words for anything less than a command, “The ‘blood of your enemies’?” 

Zarya holds her gaze as she closes the case, the snap of the latches deafening in the tense silence of the room. She stands and rolls her right shoulder, “The machine oil that flows through the omnics is very flammable. The Siberian Omnium was built over an old oil rig that drilled through half a kilometer of ice and into the Earth. That oil darkened the land after we defeated them.” She straightens her back and cannot help the proud lift of her chin as she thinks back to the last battle that drove the omnics back into their fortified hiding spot, “My comrades tell me the fires on the North Wing are still burning.” 

Mei’s face transforms from horror to something harder. “An … ecological disaster.”

Zarya gets the distinct impression that the scientist is holding back her words, but she is unrepentant, “A casualty of war.”

“Hm.” She pushes her glasses further up her nose and turns back to her machines. Zarya watches her carefully as her expression gradually softens as she arranges her tools, hands lingering over the grip of her blaster.  

Another shout from outside grabs their attention and they both startle heads snapping to the window.  _ So much for stealth.  _ Zarya frowns, “They are both stubborn as donkey, one likes to yell at walls and the other refuses to let the past go.” She rolls her shoulder and stretches her neck to the side.  _ Why all this tension?  _ When she looks back to Mei she finds the other woman watching her with disbelief. “What? What he did to his brother was over a decade ago. Hanzo should stop uselessly punishing himself and look forward.”

The corners of Mei’s mouth are turned down in a harsh frown that instantly looks out of place on the normally cheerful scientist, “I think you know that letting go of the past is easier said than done!” 

Zarya reels back, stunned and more than a little confused. 

Mei seems immediately embarrassed by what she has said and draws in her shoulders, shrinking back. She turns once again to her tools quickly launching into a story as if it is a continuation of her outburst, “After we lost power in Ecopoint Antarctica me and the team had to go into cryosleep. At the time we were well on our way to collecting enough data to track the atmospheric anomaly plaguing the Earth at the time. Overwatch would come soon to help and we could continue with our mission. We were hopeful. I would never have thought in a million years that we would be forgotten.”

Mei is looking down at her tools, running her hands over her blaster again, eyes obscured by her dark fringe hanging down, but Zarya doesn’t need to see her face to know her forlorn expression. It is unchartered territory, to say the least, and Zarya is frozen in place, mind buzzing as she tries to understand how this relates to the argument outside. “I have heard some of your story, but I am sorry to say it has been through others.”

Mei looks up nodding, as if to reassure Zarya, “I don’t really talk about it. It was Winston’s recall that woke me up, though I didn’t know it at the time. When I realized that almost a decade had passed and that I was the only one who’d made it …” 

Mei’s voice hitches and now Zarya starts forward but is brought up short by a low drawn out electronic whir that if Zarya didn’t know better she’d swear sounded mournful. A small floating hunk of metal rises out of its case and pushes up under Mei’s arm until she embraces it, laughing once again, “There you are Snowball! I thought you would sleep all day.” Another series of beeps puts Zarya on edge but seems to calm Mei, “You’re right, I wasn’t the only one who made it.” She looks back up to Zarya and if she senses the other woman’s discomfort she doesn’t show it, “You know Snowball saved my life when we realized that we would have to walk out of the Ecopoint. Sacrificed themselves so I would have enough power for my equipment.”

Zarya cannot help the scoff that escapes her mouth, “A floating battery. You do your brilliance an injustice.”

It seems it is Mei’s turn to reel back in surprise, “Snowball is not just some convenient power source. Without them, I would not have been able to build my endothermic blaster, or walked out across hundreds of kilometers of ice.” She pushes her glasses higher up her nose, her gaze piercing, “I would have died alone, without hope.”

The little machine beeps proudly and starts moving towards Zarya, the cartoonish eyes on its front screen wide. Zarya draws up her frame and takes a step back, instantly resentful that this tiny omnic has set her on her back foot, “A good dog, to be sure.” She turns towards the door, ignoring Mei’s small gasp of surprise, “They have argued long enough, it is time for work.” She throws open the door, pushing away the feeling that she is retreating and stomps outside to get the mission back under control. Her heavy footfalls on the wooden porch are loud enough to get the attention of the two men, instantly halting their argument. If she uses her Sergeant’s voice to command them into action then it is all for the better as they get back to storing their belongings and set about the business of securing their location and planning their next moves. The problem of heating the cabin is pushed aside, the wood stove remaining dark for the time being.

 

 

**

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**

 

**Wandering or Doesn’t Even Know She’s Lost**

 

“Well, I don’t know about you gals, but that place looked dead as a doornail.”

 

McCree and Hanzo bustle into the cabin, back from their scouting mission and no doubt seeking some warmth. The cabin is barely warmer than outside since the group decided that they should keep as low a profile as possible while assessing the situation. Zarya and Mei sit in dusty but comfortable old chairs on opposite sides of the cramped living room centered around the currently unused wood stove. The nuclear unit that normally powers Zarya’s graviton surge sits on the table between them, the cooling shield surrounding the deadly radioactive material within giving off harmless passive energy, heating the air around it. The fan unit is boosted by Snowball’s solar charging station in an effort to move the warm air around the space a bit more. Zarya had tried a joking tone when she’d suggested that Mei use her portable battery to power the makeshift heater as they set up the space they would call home base. It had not been appreciated by the scientist, to say the least, and the tension between them remained, but the little omnic had diligently set it up and Zarya had had to admit that its programming was pretty clever. Not out loud, of course. 

Zarya finished off the hunk of cheese she was eating from her ration pack and handed one to Hanzo as the archer sat stiffly on the tiny sofa next to her. The man looked positively frozen, a look of concentration so intense on his face no doubt commanding every fibre of his being to stop shivering. Though the coat he wore now was a proper Overwatch issued winter wear, she knew that he would not have been wearing it during their surveillance of the supposedly defunct Ecopoint Arctic facility, the object of their mission.  _ His insistence to have full mobility in bow arm will freeze him to death. _ She knows if she moves the heater closer to him he will become insulted and likely storm outside to sit on the porch and brood, so she leans back in her chair and finishes her meal.

McCree collapses onto the sofa next to the archer bumping into his side and causing the other man to crush into the arm of his seat. The cowboy gratefully takes a ration pack as he is mercilessly elbowed in the ribs by an annoyed Hanzo. He ignores the poking and settles back into the worn upholstery, partly to annoy his partner and partly to share his body heat, Zarya is sure. She catches Mei watching them with an amused look on her face. She pauses in her work, tuning the endothermic mechanism on her blaster, her eyes flitting over to Zarya. She gives Mei a knowing grin, and the other woman bites her lip and looks back down at her tools, no doubt holding in a giggle. Not even the cool wan light from their portable lanterns is enough to mask the pink in her cheeks. 

Zarya tears her eyes away from the scientist, pleased that the other woman seems cheerful despite their still not talking. The cowboy rips open a can of beef stew with gusto and starts eating voraciously, as if in silent competition with Hanzo who has already started into his second can. Zarya raises her brow in alarm but decides to save her speech about chewing food before swallowing for another time, “We did not see any activity this morning either...”

A beep from the little omnic interrupts her and she looks over annoyed. Mei sets a hand on top of the metallic dome that houses the screen currently showing the shape of brows that look distinctly put out. “... until the little omnic picked up on the energy signature that sent us out here in the first place.”

Mei adds, patting the Snowball fondly on the head, “Winston and Athena confirmed it as the same signal.”

McCree gives a long whistle of appreciation, “Well that’s mighty impressive there, Snowball. Didn’t know you had long-range sensors too. You’re just full of surprises.”

 Zarya grunts in agreement, unwilling to voice her similar thoughts. “Mei has outfitted it amazingly. Still, we did not see any other activity or signs that someone or something is inside. The place looks completely destroyed from the Crisis and has been almost entirely reclaimed by the snow over the decades since.”

Hanzo sets his now empty ration pack down on the floor and Zarya passes him another one. With the cold, they will be burning through their calorie supplies in record time.  _ We will need another food source _ . The archer’s terse voice snaps her from her worries about food, “We should not waste time. We should move in.”

Mei bobs her head in agreement, “I agree. The sooner we can recover any information that may still be inside, the sooner I can link it to my own climate data.” She gestures outside where the snow has started falling again, “Something is causing the atmospheric fluctuations and we need to find its cause so we can predict it.” She looks worriedly around at the others, “This area was on track for complete melting, and something brought it back. On the one hand, the ecosystem is slowly returning to pre-industrial norms, the species driven to the brink of extinction are growing, but on the other …” Her voice trails off, and she bites her lip as if ashamed to voice doubt over something that she would normally be overjoyed about.

“It may not be natural,” fills in the cowboy.

“It may be controlled by agents unknown,” amends the archer. 

Zarya sets down her now empty ration pack and looks around the room to the faces of her teammates, expressions eager to solve this mystery, “It is settled. Now we rest for we go in tomorrow. Together.”

******

 

“I thought you hated cold.”

 

Hanzo, chest bare and skin reddened from the biting chill of the air pulls his arm back, taking aim with Stormbow, “I do.” He doesn’t bother to look at Zarya and McCree emerging from the cabin, his voice colder than the early winter morning.

McCree keeps walking past the archer to the firearms section of the impromptu shooting range the pair had set up when they had arrived. “Don’t mind him, Zar-ya, he’s still punishing himself by whatever means most conveniently presents itself before his ailing soul outta sheer stubborn habit. Guess there’s something to be said for the old adage, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

The skin around Hanzo’s eyes tightens, the only outward sign that McCree’s jab has affected him. Coming from a man known for such exacting control over his emotions he may as well be having an all-out tantrum with such an obvious tell. 

Unwilling to be dragged into the middle of whatever is going on between them, Zarya ignores them both and takes a stance in front of the target, raising the rifle to her shoulder and looking along the barrel, “Show me how to work your pea shooter, cowboy.”

McCree sputters, “Well it ain’t no gravitron blaster, but that there rifle isn’t just some antique neither.”

“Particle cannon and graviton surge.” The archer’s voice cuts through the air like one of Mei’s icicles.

McCree has a distinctly mischievous gleam in his eye as he moves in to adjust the butt of the rifle against Zarya’s shoulder, “Whatever! As I was sayin’, this gal is what’s gonna save our collective hides when we run out of Overwatch’s fancy ration packs.”

Zarya stifles her amusement along with her annoyance with their sniping at each other. She is immediately reminded of the tension between her and Mei that’s drawn out over the week they’d been on mission.  _ At least they are talking at each other if not exactly with one another. _ She huffs out a breath, “I think it is Hanzo’s arrow that will feed us if it comes to that.”

McCree kicks her calf to widen her stance, though she’s pretty sure it was harder than necessary. “When you’re done learning on this beaut you’ll be giving Ana a run for her money, just you wait an’ see.”

“Ha!” That gets a laugh out of her, though she would be secretly pleased to become even a tenth as good as the seasoned sharpshooter. McCree steps back and she looks along the sight towards the slab of wood pinned to the trunk of a tree about 30 meters away. There’s not much to aim at as McCree and Hanzo have been using them for practice the past few days. Ever since they’d agreed they could afford to risk stepping down from stealth mode and go undercover as a small hunting party the cabin had become open season for friendly competition. The decrepit state of the Ecopoint and the sheer distance from the cabin were the deciding factors, though warming the cabin with an actual fire had been an obvious bonus, and one they would start that night at the team meal.

  McCree leans in and says in a low voice as if imparting valuable wisdom, “Move fast, aim sure and most importantly, don’t hesitate.”

Zarya squeezes the trigger and a branch above the target snaps off in an explosion of wood and snow. She grinds her teeth as she lowers the barrel to quickly reload the way McCree had shown her, the way she’d practiced 100 times before stepping out of the cabin. She gives a good-natured glare to the laughing fools behind her but concentrates on carefully pulling back the hammer. The cowboy had really outdone himself in restoring the old rifle, the brass fittings gleaming, the smooth slide of metal on metal and the satisfying click of the mechanical parts fitting together perfectly even after probably over a century of use. When McCree had dug it out of the back of a closet and presented it to the group like treasure they’d all laughed at him. Zarya bet a weeks chocolate ration that McCree would never get the rusted piece of junk to work again and vowed to drag him into the forest and leave him when he shot his own foot off. Mei added the cheese from her rations to the wager but promised to drag him back to the cabin after shooting his foot. Hanzo was the only one that bet he could do it, upping the ante with a bottle of sake he’d smuggled in Stormbow’s case, with the stipulation that McCree would have to win a shooting contest. Zarya and Mei have lost their rations and McCree had lost the shootout but in the end, they shared the food and sake.

Zarya practices for an hour or so, managing to hit the target a few times before handing the rifle back to McCree. As she heads back inside the cabin she glances back to see the cowboy standing behind the archer with his hands crossed over his chest. Expecting to hear their sniping start back up she starts to turn away but notices McCree taking off his ever-present heavy wool serape, offering it to Hanzo. To her surprise he takes it, throwing it deftly over his broad shoulders as he moves to observe McCree get in his own rifle practice.  _ Hm.  _

Inside the cabin, Zarya is met with silence broken only by a dull thumping. “Mei?” No answer. She looks around and quickly finds the noise is coming from under the pile of newly chopped wood drying out by the door. The precarious pile had spilled over, spread out under a low window where the cable running from Snowballs power converter to a small solar array outside is stretched taut, slamming the solar panel into the window and dislodging the blanket roll serving as makeshift insulation. Zarya sighs hard, “Oh you silly pup.” She crouches in front of the pile and starts moving the wood away, quickly revealing the side of the little omnics dome. She clears away the obstruction to a flurry of beeps as Snowball slowly straightens up. Hanging on under the rim of the dome she starts brushing off the dirt from the jittery omnic, “Hold still.” She commands but tries to keep her hands gentle. Snowball gives a quiet whine and Zarya notices that the colour on its digital eyes is faded. She gestures to the cradle of its power converter, “Go.” It floats there for a few seconds visibly drooping but seems to get the message when Zarya opens the window to readjust the solar panels and straighten out the cable. By the time she’s replaced the blanket and closed the window, Snowball is snug in its cradle, a small light blinking on its screen showing charging progress. She finds the washcloth by the sink and dampens it slightly. Kneeling in front of the sleeping omnic she gently wipes away the more stubborn wood dust. “Silly pup,” she repeats.

She’d just decided to try her hand at starting the fire in the wood stove and started to stand up when a voice comes from behind, “Thank you.”

Zarya looks over her shoulder to find Mei standing in the door to the bunkroom, a small smile on her face that she is visibly struggling to keep from breaking out into something larger. Zarya shrugs, a warm feeling blooming in her chest even as she’s embarrassed at being caught.  _ At what? Cleaning up the mess that little omnic made. _ Even as she thinks it she knows that it isn’t true. She beckons Mei over to the living area, hoping to keep the talk going, “Come, help me start the fire. Let’s warm this place up for once.”

 

******

 

“This reminds me of my village in Siberia.”

 

They have been in the cabin for weeks now, every day maintaining their cover with the few locals they’ve encountered and every night carefully making their way a little further into the defunct Ecopoint. Normally split into their small two-agent teams, this is one of those rare evenings they are spending together after a joint mission to retrieve some of the only intact servers they’d uncovered.  _ A successful mission. _ Zarys beams to herself taking another sip of the sweet sake, another stash that Hanzo had successfully hidden in their gear. 

The team is lounging around the cabin, warmed from the roaring fire and the happy and relaxed bodies. Hanzo is sitting at the ancient upright piano shoved against the wall beside the door to the bunk room. It had been covered in a dust cloth, stacked with crumbling cardboard boxes. The team had ignored it, no one seemingly interested until one day Hanzo admitted that he could play.  _ Used to play _ , he’d stipulated, clearly indicating it was part of his past, something that generally wasn’t talked about. Over time though, the cardboard boxes were cleared away, the dust cloth stored in a cupboard and the bench pulled out. Hanzo had spent several painful hours tuning it while the others had tried to sleep. This was his first time playing in over a decade, he’d said, but it was still beautiful. He claimed he couldn’t remember any of the songs he’d used to play but Mai had found stacks of music in one the boxes. Now McCree sat beside him on the bench, dutifully turning the pages of music when Hanzo nodded at him, adding his low voice to the tune when the mood struck him.

Zarya sprawls in one of the upholstered chairs, legs slung over the side. She watches Mei laying stretched out on her stomach on the small sofa, arm dangling down beside Snowball. One foot taps along with the music as she considers Zarya, “Music was important where you come from?” 

Watching her feel the rhythm brings Zarya back to the gatherings of her youth. Friends and family coming together at some neighbours house, drinking and dancing late into the dark winter nights. The music turns lively and sweet, McCree making up some story to sing along, some tall tale of some adventure making them all chuckle. She stands up and moves over to the sofa, holding out her hand, “Yes, it was. Come, I will show you.” Mei beams up at her, placing a cool hand onto Zarya’s warm one, her long fingers wrapping around and pulling her up and into her arms.

They move together with the music, Mei’s giggles alternating between McCree’s increasingly outlandish lyrics and Zarya’s dips and spins. When the music changes to something slower, but just as sweet, Zarya looks down to find warm eyes looking back up at her. She finds there are things she would like to say but words are sticking in her throat. Mei seems to sense it and fills in for her, “You are right,” her hand slides along Zarya’s shoulder to rest against her neck, leaving a cool trail in its wake, “It drives away the darkness.”

 

*******

 

“I’m sorry, I am so chilled, my body must feel like I’m made of ice.”

 

“You do not feel like ice, you feel of wet heat, deep like ocean,” Zarya speaks against Mei’s ear, letting her voice run deep, eliciting a shiver from the woman in her arms, back pressed against Zarya’s chest. Mei’s legs unconsciously fall further open as she dips two fingers between the wet folds and delves inside. She presses her palm down on the sensitive flesh as she starts up a rhythm, her strong fingers searching for the bundle of nerves inside. Mei lets out a low moan as her arms circle above her head and around Zarya’s neck and shoulders, pulling her head down until her lips meet the exposed skin of her neck. Zarya alternates between playful bites and soothing swipes of her tongue as Mei starts moving her hips to the rhythm Zarya has set. 

They are fully naked, Zarya sat on one of the upholstered chairs pulled close to the fire with Mei sprawled on top of her. They’d been rapidly getting closer once they’d started talking again, and this afternoons activities seemed to follow naturally from their mutual flirting. Mei was surprisingly straightforward in what she wanted, which definitely included Zarya’s hands on every inch of her she could reach. They had hit a roadblock in their mission, their inability to crack into the last vestiges of hidden information a source of mounting stress amongst the agents. Pressure to finish soon was mounting as outside forces seemingly closed in. Training in their dwindling spare time helped considerably, but this,  _ this _ skin on skin contact, Mei’s very vocal response to every touch, her sweet voice deepening, commanding even,  _ this _ was infinitely better.

Mei moans loudly when she comes, almost shouting and Zarya can’t help the heady rush of pleasure it gives her. The other woman’s hand clamps down on her own as if Zarya would willingly pull out of her now. As she rides out the high, Zarya runs her other hand over one breast, gently squeezing the peaked nipple, tight with Mei’s arousal. Her hand is swatted away as Mei shifts in her arms, squealing, “I feel like an overstimulated cat.” As if to prove her point she dips her head forward lightning fast, seizing Zarya’s errant fingers between her teeth. 

“Ow!” Zarya lightly slaps her thigh, a punishment in jest which just make Mei’s lips smirk around her fingers as she twists in her arms. Zarya tests the waters as she gently pushes her fingers deeper into Mei’s mouth. Her hot tongue wraps around one digit and slowly pulls inwards. Zarya is mesmerized by reddened lips that close around her fingers and she pushes in again.

Mei is looking at her with real mischief in her eyes and the hot pool below Zarya’s belly starts stirring. Her mouth slides off her fingers with a slight pop, the giggle she lets out not so much cute as deliciously ominous. “What are you up to, little cat?”

Mei leans forward, hands sliding up the sides of Zarya’s face as she dips down to meet her lips. “I’m hungry,” she says before their mouths crash together, that hot tongue delving unrelentingly into Zarya’s mouth leaving her breathless. Mei’s body slides between Zarya’s legs, pulling her down to the floor. She leaves a trail burnt into Zarya’s skin as her lips move down her neck, lavishing attention to one peaked nipple then the other, then over her belly, fingers following with nails leaving light red streaks in their wake. The scientist settles onto the floor, places her hands under each of Zarya’s thighs, pushing up and apart forcing her hips to tip upwards and laying her bare. Zarya catches her smiling satisfied to herself before delving forward, soft lips parted and tongue diving in mercilessly. Zarya’s head falls back against the chair as she lets out a long low moan, her hands searching out the top of Mei’s head, fingers delving into the dark silky hair, cradling the back of her skull. Her mind is blissfully blank as she lets herself flow towards the edge of orgasm for the first time in she doesn’t know how long. 

She hangs onto the feeling of completeness long after she climaxes and they have moved to the sofa to cuddle together under a blanket, long after they have dressed and the others have come back after they have eaten and rested and started a new day. Zarya can’t put a name to it but she feels like she has found something, something she didn’t even know she was missing.   

 

******

 

“Aren’t you a scientist? I thought you didn’t believe in things like magic.”

 

Mei is sitting on the arm of one of the chairs in the living space, facing Hanzo who is sat in a kitchen chair, back straight as a board. Mei looks up to Zarya who is standing behind Hanzo, a small sly smile playing on her lips, “Zarya’s hands make me believe in anything.”

She gives Mei a smirk and a wink before pulling out a pair of hair cutting scissors from her kit. She catches McCree sitting on the other side of the table side eyeing her. His eyes flick between herself and Mei, a look of dawning realization on his face that he is quick to suppress.  _ Can’t get nothing past you cowboy.  _ Zarya chuckles to herself. She and Mei had been intimate together for more than a week now and they weren’t exactly trying to hide it.

Still, she couldn’t blame him for not noticing. They had ramped up their operations once more before Winston decided to pull the plug on the whole thing. The energy signature that had originally drawn them out there had disappeared soon after they’d arrived and not returned. They’d gotten as much as they were going to get from the Ecopoint and Mei seemed happy digging through the old data. Their extraction was set for the next morning and it was their last evening in the cabin before their final mission that night to wrap things up. They’d decided to gorge themselves on their dwindling rations with the rationale that it would be less they’d have to carry back, what with the added gear and data drives they’d salvaged so far.  Although it was generally agreed that there was something unsatisfying in not discovering what the signal had been, they were all eager to get back to Gibraltar, though the feeling was bittersweet. 

Zarya had decided to prepare for their return with her own grooming ritual. She had started shaving her grown out hair using the cracked mirror in the bathroom when Mei had taken the shears out of her hands and had instructed her to move to the kitchen. Zarya luxuriated in the feeling of Mei’s capable hands in her hair, her clever fingers giving the most delicious head massage Zarya had ever had after she was done cutting. She had styled it in the way Zarya preferred, emphasizing the star shaved into her undercut, though she’d have to save the colouring until they got back to their home base. 

Before Zarya could start to clean up, McCree declared that it was only fair that they all get one of Mei’s “famous” head massages. Mei gave the most adorable  _ Oh no! _ she’d ever heard at the prospect that word would get around base and she’d face a line up blocking the halls to her lab. While McCree joked about how much she could charge, Hanzo had quietly stepped in front of Zarya, pulling his traditional ribbon from his long hair. 

His voice was so quiet she almost didn’t catch what he said, “I have always wanted to cut my hair. Will you do me the favour? Please.”

The room fell into shocked silence and Zarya wasn’t sure if it was the idea of the fastidiously traditional Hanzo asking that she cut away his long hair or the fact that he’d done so with a  _ please. _ Zarya had gestured to the seat she’d just vacated and Hanzo had sat down stiffly while the chatter started up again. 

She parted his hair in two, twisting the top half around into a bun on the top of his head, tying it off with one of Mai’s hair elastics. “Like mine? Short on back and sides, longer on top?” Hanzo nods as he removes his shirt. He seems almost nervous and Zarya thinks this may be a bigger deal to him than just a haircut. “You want I shave a dragon onto the side?”

That gets the glimmer of a smile from the rigid archer and he relaxes back into the chair, “No.”

There is an immediate protest from the cowboy who, if anything, looks more nervous than the archer, “Aw, come on, Hanzo. You could get a couple of ‘em to match your tattoo. Would look real cute.” That gets a glare shot his way and they start bickering about how assassins do not look  _ cute _ .

Zarya grins and pulls a section of long dark hair away from his head. Hanzo is so distracted by McCree’s increasingly ridiculous suggestions punctuated by Mei’s input that he doesn’t even notice when the bottom half is gone and Zarya starts her electric clipper. Snowball helpfully pushes the portable generator closer to the chair so Zarya doesn’t have to pull on the cord. She looks down, “Thank you. What do you think should be done about Hanzo’s looks?”

Snowball shows a cartoonish depiction of two noodle-like dragons tied up in a knot which gets the room laughing again. Zarya smiles over at the floating omnic and mouths  _ Good job. _

By the time she is done, Hanzo has a completely new look. She trimmed the top-most portion of his hair but left it long enough to wear it down if he so chooses. When Mei clasps her hands together, cooing at him, and McCree declares him  _ downright pretty  _ Hanzo snatches the hair elastic from the table and ties his hair up into a tight bun on top of his head. Mei brings out the mirror and he examines it from all sides, declaring Zarya’s work to be exceptional and more than he’d hoped. When McCree reaches out for the third time to pet the soft hair on the back of his skull, Hanzo rounds on him and attacks, knocking McCree to the floor and digging his fingers into his ribs. Laughter starts bubbling out of the cowboy and he tries to squirm out of the archer’s firm grasp. 

“I. AM. NOT. CUTE.” Hanzo asserts even as he starts laughing himself. McCree can’t get a word out what with all the laughter but starts to get purchase on Hanzo flipping him over. Hanzo calls for help and Mei quickly joins in, climbing on to McCree’s back, pulling him down again. Zarya slides in behind them, wrapping her long arms around both Mei and McCree. The cowboy is strong but they are stronger and effectively hold him as Hanzo renews his attacks. McCree’s guffaws turn to squeals which gets everyone weak with laughter again. He breaks free and starts an attack of his own starting with Hanzo who leaps away out of his grasp. He quickly turns on Mei who yells in panic, clutching at Zarya as the room dissolves into riotous screams. Zarya grabs McCree once again, holding him fast as he giggles his way through the next onslaught. She gets the distinct impression that he isn’t fighting his hardest to get away and she is silently thankful at his powers for transforming the mood of the whole team. 

Hanzo’s commanding voice betrays his amusement and Zarya doesn’t think she’s ever seen such lightness of heart in his eyes before, “Hold him down, if his arm gets loose we’re all dead!”

 

**

****

******

****

**

 

**Trapped on the Ice Floe**

 

“Hold him down! If his arm moves or his body shifts the bullet could move even deeper.”

 

_ If he moves he’s dead _ is the warning that goes unsaid. McCree is spread out on the kitchen table, Zarya stands behind his head, crouched down holding his arms and shoulders fast with her own. Hanzo stands at his feet holding down his legs, mouth taut in a grim line, eyes wild with panic and fury. McCree is breathing hard and fast, eyes and teeth clenching as he tries to ride out the pain. Mei scrambles around the kitchen and comes back with a wooden spoon. She none too gently forces his mouth open and shoves the handle of the spoon cross-wise so he can bite down. Zarya thinks for a wild moment that his jaw will snap it in half.

Mei shouts a command into the room, “Snowball, get the medkit!”

The little floating omnic is already under her arm with the kit in its grip. It deposits it on the chair beside her and snaps it open in a flash. Mei grabs the bottle of disinfectant and splashes it over her hands. Snowball is already handing her the scissors which she uses to carefully but quickly cut away at the straps of McCree’s body armour and the side of his shirt. Zarya helps to ease off the armour, careful to avoid touching his side. Mei pulls back the tattered shreds of his shirt to reveal the gunshot wound. 

Hanzo sucks in a breath and locks eyes on McCree, “Look at me.” His voice is so commanding that Zarya feels compelled to look across at him, though he was clearly talking to the cowboy. She imagines what his subordinates must have felt back when he had been head of his clan.  _ A true leader. _

She starts to wonder if he will ever take up the mantle again within Overwatch, but is immediately pulled back into their current situation by Mei’s apologetic tone, “This is going to hurt.” 

She pours disinfectant over the wound, clearing away the blood as best she can. McCree screams around the handle in his mouth, his muscles straining against her and Hanzo’s restraining holds. But he does not drop the spoon, nor does he look away from Hanzo.  _ Strong like bull _ . The deep reverberation of her former weightlifting coach draws up through her memories, a ghost from another life.

She looks to Mei who is bent close over the wound with a pair of tweezers, inspecting it under the bright light provided by Snowball. “Can you do anything?”

There is a long tense moment of silence before Mei simply states, “I don’t know.” She grabs a bundle of swabs in a set of clamps with one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. “I’m going to clean it up as best I can then we will decide what to do next.”

Zarya watches while Mei carefully cleans and trims the torn cloth and metal stuck in the flesh of McCree’s side. At one point he is so quiet she thinks he has passed out but finds him resolutely holding Hanzo’s gaze, jaw still tightly clamped down on the spoon handle. She can feel his pulse thready and speeding under her fingers but he is still breathing. She hangs on to that thought and lets her mind wander over the events of the evening.

Their last mission into Ecopoint Arctic. The final passageway that led to a lab deep into the facility had been cleared and they were about to breach the door. That’s when the emergency signal from Athena had sounded in their earpieces. It was broken up from the weakness of the signal having to pass through so many layers of ground and broken steel, but the message had been clear: the energy signal has returned and it is strong. When they’d opened the door to the lab they’d gone in cautiously, swinging their lights into every corner, under every table, and behind every cabinet.

Suddenly McCree had raised a hand, fist clenched tightly in the signal for everyone to stop. “Sh!...do you hear that?”

Zarya had strained her ears and heard nothing. She had been about to say so when a faint crackle, like live wires hitting each other, came from near the server banks where Mei was getting ready to extract any remaining data. Mei took a step back as McCree had moved forward. Nothing but silence. The cowboy had shrugged and turned towards Mei, “Well, might as well get on wi…”

That’s when the figure appeared out of mid-air on the other side of the stack accompanied by a flurry of the electrical crackles. For a split second, everyone froze. That’s when Zarya had noticed the telltale logo on the shoulder of the uninvited guest. The terrorist organization and enemy, “Talon.”

It was over in a flash. McCree’s pistol and the Talon agent’s weapon went off simultaneously, knocking themselves away from each other. McCree knocked into Mei’s side, both crashing to the floor. Zarya rushed forward as she saw the Talon agent scrambling for some sort of device in their stealth suit even as they hit the wall. She intended to subdue the enemy agent with her fists in such close quarters. Hanzo, several meters away, loosed an arrow which zoomed across the room straight for the agent’s head. Even within that short amount of time the agent seemingly disappeared leaving nothing but a smear of blood from their bullet wound and the arrow lodged into the wall.

There had been no time to think. McCree had ordered Mei through gritted teeth to grab the data as he tried to stand and asses his wound. Zarya and Hanzo searched the room quickly but to no avail, the agent was gone. Mei had declared that if anything had been there then the Talon agent had taken it. In less than a minute they were on their way back out again. At first, McCree had seemed fine enough to walk out, prosthetic hand clamped over his wound, but before long he’d needed help walking. By the time they’d gotten clear of the broken down facility Zarya was carrying him in both arms, Hanzo taking lead and Mei in the rear. They did not encounter the Talon agent again, but they did find a trail of blood staining the snow. Hanzo had sprinted ahead to follow it but returned quickly with nothing but a broken piece of tech the likes of which none of them had ever seen.

Hanzo was grim, “I can only guess it was some sort of transportation device.” He looked into the moonless night around them, fury in his eyes, “They cannot have gone far after they teleported out of the lab, but the trail will be impossible to find in this darkness.”

Mei put the broken pieces in her pack, “There are rumours of teleportation technology even beyond what Vishkar already produces. Winston will have a better idea.”

They had reported back to Athena and Winston on the way back to the cabin. The priority was to stabilize McCree and get him to the rendezvous point. The extraction time would be moved up a few hours, but they could do no more than that. Secondary priority would be to hunt down the Talon agent and recover the data. 

And now here they were, McCree seriously injured and an enemy agent on the loose. If they were lucky the agent was alone. Unlucky, and there could be an ambush at any moment. Athena kept in regular contact reporting no detectable activity in the area, but given the teleportation technology they’d witnessed that night, the AI’s reassurances were cold comfort.

Mei finished taping a pad to McCree’s wound. “Jesse, I’m going to give you a pain killer but it’s not much and you have to try your hardest not to move OK?” 

McCree only nods, letting the spoon drop out of his mouth but seemingly unable to speak. A sheen of sweat has broken out across his skin and he starts shivering. Mei quickly injects into his shoulder and Hanzo places one of the blankets from the bunks gently over him.

Zarya straightens up and stretches her lower back, cringing at the crack her spine makes. She looks over to Mei who seems at a loss with what to do with her hands and is wringing her fingers. Hanzo has straightened up as well and is looking out the windows, one hand poised over his bow, the other gripped around McCree’s ankle. Zarya takes a deep breath, she knows what must be done, “I saw a sled in the back shed. We can secure McCree to it and one of us will get him to the Rendezvous point. The others will go after the Talon agent and finish the mission.”

Mei looks startled, “But what if they have reinforcements coming? We should stay together.” 

Hanzo’s voice is cold, analytical, “If there were more they would have attacked by now when we were at our most vulnerable. The extraction point is in the opposite direction of the Ecopoint and the trail of the Talon agent.” He looks between Mei and Zarya, his face a mask of stone but his eyes are wild, “We can hunt them down.”

_ And make them pay for what they have done _ is the implication.  _ Vengeance will make us even more vulnerable. _ Zarya nods, “Hanzo, you will take Jesse. Mei and I will hunt down the agent.”

A flurry of beeps immediately follows her pronouncement and Zarya looks over to find the little floating omnic regarding her with an indignant expression on its screen. She quickly amends, “And Snowball.”

Hanzo looks conflicted, “I have experience in tracking. I should be the one to go on the hunt.” Even as he says the words his hand tightens around McCree’s ankle. 

Zarya is firm, “You are also the best one to defend McCree alone.” She moves towards the bedroom intending to grab one of the mattresses to secure to the sled. “We have no time to waste. Let’s go.”

They store as much of their gear as possible and take only what they absolutely need. The dawn finds Zarya and Mei standing side by side on the porch of the little cabin, watching grimly as Hanzo takes off with a pale and shaking McCree secured to the sled. Stormbow is slung over a shoulder, McCree’s six-shooter Peacekeeper tucked into the belt tied around his waist. Soon enough they disappear behind the stand of pines sheltering the cabin, the sounds of the sled sliding over the solid base of snow fade into the trees.

Snowball floats next to Mei, who adjusts her endothermic pack over her back. Zarya rolls her shoulder, the antique rifle overlapping the straps of her particle cannon, her pockets full of nothing but bullets and energy bars. She looks over at Mei who nods resolutely, giving a crooked little smile, “Ready?”

Zarya grins down at her, the feeling that they could take on the world filling her chest. She tempers the adrenaline and affirms, “Ready.”      

 

**

****

******

****

**

 

**The Ice Returns**

 

“It is worse than that, I think it is broken.”

 

Zarya feels as gently as she can around Mei’s ankle, already tender with swelling. They had tracked the Talon agent through an ice field sat atop kilometers of boulders broken into shards of rock. They had tried to keep pace while watching carefully where they stepped before the winds started up again and the trail would be lost, but the way was pockmarked with holes hidden by soft layers of snow. Mei, arguably the most comfortable of them all when it came to navigating such a route, still fell prey to an icy patch, her thick boot sliding into the space between two rocks, the depth just enough to pitch her forward with unstoppable momentum, the angle just enough to force an unnatural twist. Zarya wills her heart to calm down as Mei screws her eyes shut in obvious pain. She knows immediately what she has to do: Mei will have to stay put and Zarya will have to hunt alone and put down their prey quickly before she freezes. 

Mei’s eyes fly open and search hers out, she has apparently come to the same conclusion. They have a silent confrontation where Mei looks like she will become defiant and insist to go on. Zarya’s instinct is to dictate the situation, be firm and strong in the outcome, but she finds she has no will to go that route and instead finds herself pleading.  _ Please, my darling, just stay here and be safe. _

Mei’s eyes soften and start to water and Zarya knows that she has conceded. Thick, gloved fingers fly up to her cheek and Zarya latches on to them, pressing them closer into the side of her face, letting their chill cool her adrenaline warmed skin. She leans in quickly for a kiss, all too brief, and Mei’s gloved hand tries to find purchase as Zarya starts to pull away. She catches their fingers together and squeezes, trying to reassure, to dispel the fear that has replaced the anger and sadness in Mei’s eyes. 

Letting go, she dumps her gear, leaving only McCree’s rifle slung across her shoulder. His southern drawl echoes in her mind,  _ Move fast, aim sure and most importantly, don’t hesitate.  _

Zarya turns to Snowball who has been floating a little ways away as if to give them space. She points her finger at the omnic as she turns back towards the enemy’s trail, “Stay.” Snowball looks at her, digital eyes sloping downwards, clearly unimpressed. Conceding that her tone may be interpreted as sounding like she is commanding a pet she amends, “Please, Mei needs you. We are closing in but if Talon agent doubles back, she will be defenceless.”

That seems to get through to the little omnic and they drop down closer to Mei, who reaches out to rest her hand on top of their domed head. Zarya turns away and doesn’t look back. She keeps the image of the two of them in the forefront of her mind as she navigates the rocky terrain.

It is not long before she breaks out of the ice field and finds herself on a rough beach at the side of a half-frozen lake littered with smaller jagged rocks broken up over the millennia by slow-moving glaciers. The walking will definitely be easier and the large boulders that punctuate the beach will provide sporadic cover, but she is definitely more exposed. She readies the rifle as she scans the area. Cautiously, she moves forward heading north where a pass between two sheer slopes seems the more likely direction the Talon agent would have taken. 

The wind occasionally whistles across the water, pushing Zarya to give into the cold threatening to seep into her bones. It is otherwise eerily quiet, the only sound the soft crunching of her boots on the stones. She scans every boulder, the jagged ice field to her left, even the water on her right but there are no signs of life. She is about halfway down the beach when a large pale figure emerges from a behind a boulder about twenty meters in front of her. She immediately plants her feet and raises her rifle as a huge head rises from the furry mass, black eyes pointed directly at her.  _ The ice has returned and with it the polar bears. _ She has only ever seen them online or in books before, despite having lived most of her life so far North. This one looks as big as a crouching Reinhardt, but its fur seems to hang in places, like a teddy bear without enough stuffing. One word comes to mind:  _ hungry _ . 

Cautiously, she pulls back the hammer on the rifle and looks down the sight towards the head of the bear. She breathes in and lets it out slowly, giving herself a moment to lament the need to kill this creature before it kills her, making enough noise to certainly alert the Talon agent that they were being followed if they didn’t know it already. She is about to pull the trigger when another, much smaller white furry mass pulls out alongside the big hungry bear. Then another. Zarya’s eyes flick down to take in the two half-grown cubs. She looks back to the big bear whose eyes have not wavered from her an inch.  _ Mama. _

It is then that she notices that the cubs just as frozen in caution as their mother are not looking at her at all, but rather behind her on her right. Before she can process the implications a slight electric crackle and soft scrape of metal on stone from the behind breaks the silence of the standoff.  _ Talon. _

Zarya has no time to lament her situation. The risk of turning her back on a hungry bear was less than the risk of ignoring the active enemy shooter behind her. She ducks and swings around, throwing herself to the ground, fully expecting to hear the crack of a gunshot and to feel the flare of pain of a direct hit. But it never comes and instead is replaced by a sudden  _ whoosh _ like a loud fan suddenly being turned on. As a gust of frozen air buffets across her cheek she thinks madly  _ I have heard this before, where have I heard this before?  _

Daring to look up over the glove sheltering the exposed skin of her face she sees a little floating dome over the space behind a boulder beside the water, a frozen mist spraying out beneath it. In the mist is the figure of the Talon agent, completely frozen mid-shot, finger on the trigger aimed directly at Zarya.  _ Snowball! _

Zarya rolls to her knees and takes aim with the rifle, squeezing the trigger without hesitation. The bullet pierces the agent above their heart, exploding out their back in a red spray of frozen droplets. Snowball stops the localized blizzard as Zarya gets to her feet making her way quickly to their location. The agent falls to the ground a few seconds later, their weapon scuttling uselessly over the stones. Zarya spares a quick look over her shoulder and finds the bears have backed up but have not been completely scared off by the action. She’ll have to work quickly.

She jogs over to Snowball and the downed agent while reloading, “You alright, little one?”  

Snowball gives a weak series of beeps, having used most of its energy reserves to produce the frozen blast that had immobilized the Talon agent.  _ And saved my life. _

The agent is still alive but barely breathing. Zarya slings the rifle and crouches down, swiftly lifting the pair of goggles and tactical mask off of them, “Who are you?” She demands.

The agent just gives a toothy grimace, teeth already stained with blood. They start coughing and Zarya looks back over the boulder towards the bears. The mother has started moving forward, slowly for the moment at least.  _ No time. _ She pulls off her gloves and quickly searches through the pockets of the agent until her quickly numbing fingers come across some compact data storage devices. The agents coughing increases, obvious anxiety on their features as Zarya pockets the data. She pulls on her gloves and stands. The mama bear is closing in, she’ll have to leave. She looks down to the agent, raising the butt of the rifle above their head, “Your Talon friends left you alone, but I will not. You will not have long to fear the fate that is coming for you.” She brings the rifle down hard, cracking the skull of the dying agent against the rocks with finality. She slings the rifle over her shoulder, scoops up Snowball and walks swiftly but calmly back down the beach, back to Mei and her family, without looking back.    

 

**

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**

 

**Solid Ground**

 

“Turn up the volume, I love this song!”

 

Mei sings along to the upbeat song blasting from Tracer’s speakers up in the cockpit. Zarya rests her chin on her shoulder and watches her work, nimble fingers taking apart the Talon teleporter tech that they’d picked up on the mission. They sit snugly together, side by side on the cushioned bench at the crew table on board the Orca, Mei’s leg propped up along one side, foot in a cast already covered in Tracer’s doodles. When Mei’s glasses slide down without her noticing Zarya reaches over to push them back up.

“Thank you,” Mei twists her head, leaving a little kiss on her nose before turning back to her work. Zarya is exhausted from the past 24 hours but is still too wired to doze quite yet. McCree is lying on one of the medical cots, Mercy monitoring his vital signs while Hanzo regales him with stories of the squirrels he’d had to defend this helpless cowboy from while they’d waited to be rescued. She chuckles to herself as Mercy admonishes him for trying to make McCree laugh when he’s got a gutshot. McCree’s voice isn’t quite as boisterous as usual as he insists on Hanzo continuing his tales, but he’s going to be alright.

Zarya looks across the table at Snowball resting in their recharging station. She thinks about the ice and the omnic forces crawling up from the cracks in her nightmares. It is hard to imagine Snowball among them, though at one time not so long ago she would not have made the distinction. Looking around at her crewmates, her family, all with their own nightmares of the past, she truly believes that together they are stronger, that they are never truly alone. She thinks about the mother bear and her cubs, setting out over the newly formed winter ice. Now that they have something solid beneath them they can go home.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
